Kenneth Atchity's Blog, page 107

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Reel him in! The Meg is Available on Blu-ray™ and Digital 11/13

Clint Hill Concordia alum receives Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award

Former U.S. secret service agent Clint Hill with the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award, the state’s highest accolade for its citizens. The award honors present and former North Dakotans who have made great achievements in their fields, and who have well represented the state’s values.


“Clint Hill is an exceptional North Dakotan who has risked his life and health time and time again to protect our nation and its commander in chief,” said the Governor.Burgum is a former Microsoft executive who received the award himself in 2009 before being elected to office. He released a statement announcing Hill as the recipient of the award, and applauded him for his lengthy service to the nation. Hill served in the Secret Service for seventeen years between the 1960s and 1970s, witnessing the heightened tension of the Cold War. While serving, he was responsible for protecting five consecutive presidencies, from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Gerald Ford.Hill was born in Larimore, N.D., and grew up in Washburn, N.D. He later studied at Concordia College, where he played football, basketball, and baseball, and went on to earn degrees in both history and physical education. Although Hill wanted to work as a teacher after graduation, he was instead drafted by the U.S. army, where he served as a Counterintelligence Special Agent until he was honorably discharged in 1957. He was then employed by the Secret Service between 1958 and 1975, during which he protected the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford presidencies.“It is an honor to be recognized by your home state, and North Dakota has always been my home,” said Hill. “I am honored and humbled to be placed in the company of the many incredible North Dakotans who have received this award.”During the Kennedy administration, Hill was primarily responsible for protecting First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. When President Kennedy was shot in 1963, Hill ran and jumped into their car in order to shield the First Lady and President from further harm. Hill is credited with saving Jacqueline Kennedy’s life and was honored at a ceremony days later, which the First Lady attended.“Mr. Hill has no doubt earned this medal for exceptional bravery. He displayed courage under the most difficult of circumstances” said Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon on Dec. 3, 1963.Hill continued to serve for the First Lady’s detail for a year after the assassination. During President Johnson’s administration, Hill became the Special Agent in Charge of Presidential Protection. By 1971, he had been promoted to Assistant Director of the Presidential Protective Division. When Hill retired from the Secret Service in 1975, he was Assistant Director responsible for all protective forces.Despite his success, Hill still felt immense grief over the assassination. This led to a struggle with alcoholism for a brief period following his retirement. Despite the guilt he felt, Hill was later able to find closure after visiting the scene of the incident and realizing that there was nothing he could have done. Writing also helped him express himself. After his career in the Secret Service, Hill became well known as an author. His books “Mrs. Kennedy and Me,” “Five Days in November” and “Five Presidents” became #1 New York Times bestsellers, and National Geographic is currently planning a television series based on “Five Presidents.” Hill would go on to receive Concordia’s Alumni Achievement Award in 2011.Today, Hill spends his time as a guest speaker and has taught at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. He also continues to work with the Secret Service in discussing protective strategies and procedures. The Rough Rider award will be presented to Hill during a public ceremony on Nov. 19 at 1 p.m. at the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center.

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Film Courage: Top 10 Rules For Editing A Screenplay by Dr. Ken Atchity

LITERARY HUB LOOKS INSIDE THE ROOMS WHERE 20 FAMOUS BOOKS WERE WRITTEN

We often talk about literature as if it were some kind of magic thing—like it could be conjured without effort, if only we could arrange ourselves in a certain fashion, eat the right breakfast, perform our ablutions just so, organize our desks like our favorite writers, copy their daily rituals. Unfortunately, writing is hard, no matter what you do. When you’re working, you have to be a mercenary, taking whatever space you can get, doing whatever works on that day. But when you really love a novel, there’s still something mysteriously satisfying about seeing where it was made—it’s kind of like making a pilgrimage to where your lover was born and raised. It doesn’t mean anything, exactly, because you don’t believe in magic, and yet it does. At the very least, it’s fun. So for our mutual enjoyment, I present the places where some of literature’s most beloved works were written: some beautiful, some dark, all apparently capable of inspiring greatness.Connie Hum for Connvoyage
Edith Wharton famously did most of her writing in bed (longhand, in the mornings, with her dogs). In her bedroom at The Mount, she wrote the book that would make her famous, The House of Mirth, as well as Ethan Frome, dropping each finished page to the floor for her secretary to pick up, organize, and type.Jana Crowne for Cuba Holidays
In Finca Vigía, his house in Cuba, built in 1886 by the Catalan architect Miguel Pascual y Baguer, Ernest Hemingway wrote seven books, including For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Moveable Feast, and The Old Man and the Sea, among others. He wrote in the library, which Roxana Robinson describes as “a long, pleasant, high-ceilinged room, lined with tall bookcases. In front of the windows is The Desk, huge and magisterial, about ten feet long and three feet wide, and curved like a boomerang. It’s made of dark polished wood, with carved supports at each end. Hemingway sat in the center, the ends curving forward.”Pera Palace
Like Ernest Hemingway and Ian Fleming, Agatha Christie frequented the Pera Palace Hotel in Istanbul, Turkey. Her favorite room was 411, and it was here that she reportedly wrote the bestselling Murder on the Orient Express. It’s been refurbished since that time, of course, and updated with Agatha Christie-themed art. On the plus side, while the real Orient Express no longer runs, the hotel still stands, and you can actually stay there, in the very same room as your favorite crime writer.Read more 

Type M For Murder Guest Post: Erotomania by Dennis Palumbo

Nietzsche once wrote, “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
Perhaps. Then again, Nietzsche never met Sebastian Maddox, the villain in my latest suspense thriller, Head Wounds. It’s the fifth in my series about Daniel Rinaldi, a psychologist and trauma expert who consults with the Pittsburgh police.

What makes the brilliant, tech-savvy Maddox so relentlessly dangerous is that he’s in the grip of a rare delusion called erotomania, also known as De Clerambault’s Syndrome.

Simply put, erotomania is a disorder in which a person—in this case, Maddox—falsely believes that another person is in love with him, deeply, unconditionally, and usually secretly. The latter because this imaginary relationship must be hidden due to some social, personal, or professional circumstances. Perhaps the object of this romantic obsession is married, or a superior at work. Often it’s a famous athlete or media celebrity.

Not that these seeming roadblocks diminish the delusion. They can even provide a titillating excitement. Often, a person with erotomania believes his or her secret admirer is sending covert signals of their mutual love: wearing certain colors whenever a situation puts them together in public, or doing certain gestures whose meaning is only known to the two of them. Some even believe they’re receiving telepathic messages from their imagined beloved.

What makes the delusion even more insidious is that the object of this romantic obsession, once he or she learns of it, is helpless to do anything about it. They can strenuously and repeatedly rebuff the delusional lover, denying that there’s anything going on between them, but nothing dissuades the other’s ardent devotion.

I know of one case wherein the recipient of these unwanted declarations of love was finally forced to call the police and obtain a restraining order. Even then, her obsessed lover said he understood that this action was a test of his love. A challenge from her to prove the constancy and sincerity of his feelings.

As psychoanalyst George Atwood once said of any delusion, “it’s a belief whose validity is not open to discussion.”

This is especially true of erotomania. People exhibiting its implacable symptoms can rarely be shaken from their beliefs.

Like Parsifal in his quest for the Holy Grail, nothing dissuades them from their mission.

In Head Wounds, Sebastian Maddox’s crusade—when thwarted in his desires— turns quite deadly, and requires all of Rinaldi’s resourcefulness to save someone he cares about. In real life, the treatment options for the condition are limited to a combination of therapy and medication, usually antipsychotics like pimozide. If the symptoms appear to stem from an underlying cause, such as bipolar disorder, the therapeutic approach would also involve medication, typically lithium.

What makes erotomania so intriguing as a psychological condition, and so compelling in an antagonist in a thriller, is the delusional person’s ironclad conviction—the unshakeable certainty of his or her belief.

Nonetheless, as philosopher Charles Renouvier reminds us, “Plainly speaking, there is no such thing as certainty. There are only people who are certain.”

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Kathleen Vail's Reconstructing The Shield of Achilles on It's Write Now's Best Selection of eBooks

RECONSTRUCTING THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES [Vail] has changed the words back into gold and silver… revivified the text… She has provided for us a glimpse of the world of archaic Greece. – James A. ArietiGloriously described in the Iliad, Achilles’ shield is ingeniously crafted by Hephaestus, ancient Greek god of the forge. Visiting him on Olympos, the sea nymph goddess, Thetis, petitions new armor for her son.Hephaistos replies, “Have courage, my Lady, please trust me! Good gear I can make, but to hide him from death? Now, that is another matter. I only wish I could help him with that, as I can with the making of arms, for I am an expert. No eyes have beheld such gear as I shall provide him!”True to Hephaistos’ word, Achilles’ divine armor offers the hero a path to revenge, the fulfillment of his destiny, and his key to immortal glory. But as he prepares for battle, Achilles is not blazing with heroic fervor. He’s burning with unrestrained grief, mourning for his beloved Patroklos, trusted chariot driver, brother in arms, his friend with whom he shares everything, especially his heart. Lost to the heat of battle, laid low at the hand of Hektor, slain of life and stripped of armor, his beloved is lost to the ravages of war.Filled with passionate hatred of war, Achilles swears he will fight the whole Trojan Army single-handed until he takes revenge and brings the Trojan War to its epic end. Donning his new armor, Achilles shines from head to toe in blazing bronze, his body emitting a halo of flames.Homer brings it all together, right here. Life and death, revenge and hate, righteousness and evil, glory and fate. The voices of the muses strain to the point of breaking as their song empowers Achilles with supernatural fire. Lifting his shield and charging into war, the epic weight of Achilles’ fate tips the scale of Justice in favor of Peace, ushering in the closing act of the Trojan War.(From the Foreword by Dr. James A. Arieti, Grave H. Tompson Professor of Classics, Hampden-Syndey College, Virginia:)The arms are presumably lost, but fortunately for us, Kathleen Vail has reconstructed it.Using her Homer the way Schliemann used his, she has excavated from the text the shape and composition of the shield of Achilles. In so doing she has confounded some of the critics, who claimed it could never be done.“Detailed reconstruction of the shield is impossible,” writes Webster.“…nothing so comprehensive and detailed as this could ever have been seen by Homer or his audience,” says Hogan.“It is not to be supposed that the poet had ever seen such a shield as he describes,” claims Gardner. (1)Finding artworks of roughly contemporary handiwork, she documents the illustrations and shows that indeed they could have been found on a shield such as Homer describes. It took a god one night to construct the shield; it has taken Ms. Vail–a mere mortal–five years of work and study to complete hers.Reading Homer’s description of the shield while looking at the illustrations will compel one to read slowly, savoring the details.A humorless Platonist–the kind who took Plato literally and failed to see the smile behind the dialogues–might think that these images take us even further away from the reality of the ideas. Homer, the Platonist would say, imitated in words the shield Achilles used; Ms. Vail altered the medium and put the words into pictures, moving still more distant from the original idea of a shield.
What does the dour Platonist know? She has changed the words back into gold and silver; she has revivified the text. She supplies the modern reader with an image for his mind’s eye to grasp on to. She has provided for us a glimpse of the world of archaic Greece.Read more

The Meg 2

THE MEG 2 is in the works in the works!

Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books! Reviews Art Johnson's Marilyn My Marilyn

It’s the summer of ’62, and twenty-five-year-old journalist Rory Long receives a phone call at quitting time: it’s Marilyn Monroe. She wants to personally compliment him on a review he wrote of the new collected works of poet Carl Sandburg.

She then enlists the cub reporter to tell her story; she doesn’t want to be remembered as a joke. When they meet, Rory is captivated by her knowledge of classical music, art and literature. As their relationship intensifies, Rory experiences a coming-of-age inspired by this side of Marilyn few know, and at the same time, Marilyn is influenced by Rory to begin reassessing her own life.

But when Rory’s boss assigns him to write an article on the unsolved murder of the Black Dahlia, paranoia and tension mount. File papers go missing, then mysteriously return. An unknown covert organization watches Marilyn Monroe’s every move, thinking she may hold a clue to the Dahlia case. And just when Rory can feel he’s getting closer to the truth, J. Edgar Hoover himself intervenes to request that Rory be reassigned. Rapid changes are about to unfold in the land of the free, and they may be more costly than even Rory can surmise.

In Art Johnson’s latest novel, he continues his style of combining historical fact with fiction to offer the reader a steady stream of drama, tension and humor. Marilyn, My Marilyn reveals fresh insight into the most iconic woman of modern times, not as a biography, but with a view of a nation which often buries the truth with its dead.

An extremely well written fictional account of the friendship between a journalist and Marilyn Monroe, in the lead up to her death.

I loved the character of Rory Long and his determination to not be put off Marilyn and his decision to show Marilyn as he saw her.

His depiction of Marilyn is also refreshing and although it shows the known sides, it gives another facet to her.

I’m aware this is a fictional account but it does hook you in and causes you to rethink those who you think you know. Maybe we all need to look a little closer at the people we know in public and in private.

A lovely, sensitive and brave version of which it is not only enjoyable, but believable.




About the Author

Art Johnson has been a highly regarded musician for over forty years and has performed with everyone from Luciano Pavarotti, Lena Horne, Randy Crawford and Mark O'Connor, as well as being an Academy Award and Grammy Award participant. He is a solo recording artist with ten Cd's to his credit. He has toured all over the globe and his life experience has produced his first mystery/suspense/detective thriller, "The Devil's Violin" which in it's debut has caught the attention of the reader as well as the reviewers. He lives in Monaco where Her Serene Highness Princess Charlene has requested a copy which is now in the Palace. His taut crisp prose has been well received and his newly gathered fans as an author are waiting for the next book.


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ESSAY The Mean Streets of Pittsburgh: A Thriller Author & Former Hollywood Screenwriter on Pittsburgh’s Narrative Appeal

Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter (of My Favorite Year, Welcome Back, Kotter, and more), Dennis Palumbo is a licensed psychotherapist and author. His mystery fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Strand and elsewhere, and is collected in From Crime to Crime (Tallfellow Press). His series of mystery thrillers (Mirror Image, Fever Dream, Night Terrors, Phantom Limb, and the latest — excerpted on Littsburgh! — Head Wounds) all feature Daniel Rinaldi, a psychologist and trauma expert who consults with the Pittsburgh Police.Start ReadingPraise for Dennis Palumbo’s Daniel Rinaldi Series:“Accomplished writer Dennis Palumbo calls his latest novel Head Wounds and the grim title should serve as a warning. This psychological thriller has some fine language and a strong narrative pull that keeps the pages turning, but the series of crimes that occur are unnerving…People in the story wear Pitt Panthers and Steelers sweatshirts, drive on the parkway, and get their news from KDKA. Mr. Palumbo often does more than just mention Pittsburgh landmarks; he characterizes the city in both positive and negative ways…As Head Wounds rolls to its clever, crazy gothic conclusion, no one could accuse Mr. Palumbo of being flat. This is the fifth book in his Daniel Rinaldi series and most readers will hope Dan lives to see a sixth.”
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette“Head Wounds delivers relentless action toward a climax as vivid and harrowing as anything I’ve ever read.”
— Joseph Finder, New York Times best-selling author of The Switch“The character of psychologist and trauma expert Daniel Rinaldi gives great heart to this story and elevates it to novelistic heights.”
— John Lescroart, New York Times best-selling author of Damage“Lovers of noir will enjoy Dan Rinaldi’s fast-paced adventures. Rinaldi, an empathic therapist, is on call to the Pittsburgh police. He needs every ounce of his Golden Glove skills to survive the violent world of Pennsylvania politics.”
— Sara Paretsky, Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, author, V.I. Warshawski novels“A gripping thriller, chock full of the desired twists and cliffhangers, with the added layer and intriguing access of a therapist narrator/detective. A page turner!”
— Aimee Bender, New York Times best-selling author of An Invisible Sign of My Own

What do the recent films Unstoppable, The Dark Knight Rises, and Jack Reacher — as well as popular TV series like This is Usand Mindhunter — have in common? They were all shot in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the surrounding areas.Why?Probably because of its undoubted cinematic appeal. Pittsburgh has a sprawling network of neighborhoods that are full of character, steep hills and rolling streets, venerable buildings and parks, and the famous Three Rivers… not to mention some handsome tax breaks provided by the state for today’s filmmakers.These same vivid, colorful traits (minus the tax breaks) hold true for a spate of recent novels, particularly mysteries and thrillers, set in the Steel City. Authors such as Kathleen George, Thomas Lipinksi, J.J. Hensley, and K.C. Constantine have made good use of Western Pennsylvania’s unique flavors and tints, and of the cluster of small, industrially-depleted towns that surround the urban core.I must admit, I’m prejudiced about Pittsburgh as a setting for mysterious goings-on. I was born and raised there and graduated from Pitt. Though I’ve lived in Los Angeles for many years, the Steel City still exerts a powerful pull on my memory. Which is why, when deciding on a setting for my own series of mystery thrillers, featuring psychologist and trauma expert Daniel Rinaldi, I chose my home town. But not just for nostalgia’s sake.Pittsburgh’s an amazing place, an amalgam of old and new, a shot-and-a-beer town colliding with the Information Age. The steel mills I used to toil in during summers between college semesters are all gone; in their place are sleek, modern buildings where software designers and MBAs work. Run-down sections of the city have been gentrified, with the higher real estate values and tony shops that accompany such startling changes.Moreover, with its huge financial endowments — from such fabled families as the Mellons, Carnegies, and Heinz — Pittsburgh’s become known as much for its state-of-the-art universities, museums and hospitals as for its sports teams. As well as its innovation. For example, it’s arguably the world’s pioneer in robotics and nanotechnology.In many ways, it’s these changes that truly represent the transformation of blue collar into white collar. Except that the vestiges of the old Pittsburgh I grew up in are still felt around the edges, still apparent in the weathered turn-of-the-century buildings, the neighborhoods, the immigrant values and loyalties.Traits I know about all too well.As a child, my Italian-American parents were horrified when they learned that, during lunch at school, I’d often trade my homemade fried eggplant sandwiches for more “American” peanut butter-and-jelly. These days, adult visitors to Pittsburgh are just as likely to seek out trendy restaurants for that same Italian food (adjusting for inflation, I shudder to think of the PB&J exchange rate).It would’ve been hard to imagine back when I was working summers at J&L Steel Works, part of seventeen miles of steel mills that no longer exist.* Along with my fellow students, I wore the traditional yellow hard hat that marked me as a newbie. And made us a much more convenient target for the soda bottles, tuna fish cans and other refuse dropped on us from above by the crane operators. Part of the blue-collar way of life in the mill back in the sixties, as were the ethnically-separated work crews and the occasional visits by Teamsters, unloading “misplaced” goods from the backs of trucks.Then there were the longed-for breaks from the mill’s relentless heat, when, having fallen into an uneasy truce, we college kids and veteran mill hunks sat together on the tar-paper roof, overlooking the Monongahela River, drinking Cokes and listening to Pirates games on transistor radios.Now that nostalgia-tinged Pittsburgh, like its steel mills, is pretty much gone. No better example comes to mind than when my mother’s brain tumor was removed some years back by a radical new surgery in a world-famous hospital unit, one of whose previous patients was the Dalai Lama. It’s part of a complex of new buildings — like so many springing up in the urban core — whose construction required the demolition of the older ones which had stood before.No matter how welcomed or needed, change comes with a psychic cost. This is as true for a city as it is for an individual, and I believe it’s certainly true for Pittsburgh. It’s this tension between old and new, darkness and light, that makes the steel city such a fascinating place.And such an excellent setting for a murder mystery, as more and more authors are beginning to discover as they lead their characters down the mean streets of Pittsburgh…–Dennis Palumbo

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